Belle’s Box – 71

Read about this series of posts, regarding items in a box originally owned by Belle (Lamunion) Fellows Tinker here. The cast of characters is located here. And, there is an accounting of people about whom I have little information here.

To My Affinity

The postmark is illegible.

Mrs. Belle Fellows
Manton
Mich

Dear mother
and all we have
got moved I want
to come over
Sunday if Ross
don’t think the
horse are do to
much they are
working every
day I wash yester
day. Emma was ?
? ? took care
of horses Edna

Edna was Belle’s daughter. This must have been written after she married Ross Fenton on 11 September 1910. Reading and comparing this card confirms that item 69 was sent by Edna to Belle, the handwriting is the same.

Thanks for the comment, Apple. I have learned more about history and the living situations of this family than I could have ever imagined by tackling this project.

Yes, many of the cards were written in pencil. These families were poor, perhaps poorer than we can imagine; and that poverty extended another generation. Add that the the limited available of things we consider everyday items, and you get a lot of pencil.

Their home, in very rural northern Michigan, and the road conditions in the poor weather months would have made a trip to any store out of the question during some times. I’ll get a Google map together soon, showing the locations we know.

The most interesting thing about this, to modern me, is the use of mail for things we use the phone for. Letting people know we would be there for the weekend, things like that. These distances were not great, but resources were limited. Not everyone had a car, or a horse that could be used to visit. The horses had to be used to farm the (extremely poor) ground these families scratched a living from.

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I have turned the coments back on.. That said, if you arrived here by searching for a person or place I have written about, please Send me an email.